With Ricky Gervais’ classic character David Brent returning in the film David Brent: Life on the Road, we thought we’d take a look at the show where it all began for everyone’s least favourite boss: The Office. Here are the important things you probably didn’t know about the show that would become one of the UK’s biggest comedy exports. With the passage of time it has grown enormously and has been remade in many countries until 2022. Here are some of the important things that you probably did not know about the office show.
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It’s been shown in over 80 countries around the world
2. Not only was it the first British sitcom in more than 25 years to be nominated for a Golden Globe, it was the very first British sitcom to win one, which it did in 2003
3. That same year, Ricky Gervais also won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television series: Comedy or Musical and was the first non-American to receive the award
4. When it was first shown on BBC Two, it got really bad ratings and was nearly cancelled because of this
5. Though when it was released on DVD, it would become the BBC’s biggest selling comedy release
6. Ricky Gervais has no regrets about ending the show, even though only 14 episodes of it were ever made (two series of six episodes each, plus two Christmas specials)
7. Thanks to the success of the UK show, The Office has been remade in the US, France, Germany, Canada, Chile, Israel and Sweden
8. The longest running of these is the US series, which ran for 9 seasons and 201 episodes from 2005 to 2013
9. Simpsons creator Matt Groening watched an episode of the show on a plane and liked it so much he bought a Region 2 DVD player just so he could watch the show on DVD
10. David Brent makes two brief appearances in the US version of the show and gets to meet his US counterpart Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell
11. Co-writer Steven Merchant was trying to get a job at the BBC when he partnered with Ricky Gervais and together they came up with the basic idea for The Office
12. The BBC were delighted with the short video and asked Merchant and Gervais to make a full series out of it
What else do you know about the office. Let us know if you know something and we don’t about the popular show in the comments. We will appreciate it.